


Taste, Memory

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Baking, Gen, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 20:56:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3543524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's ma wasn't much of a baker, but she had two specialties: hot cross buns on Good Friday, and apple cake for Steve's birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taste, Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was supposed to be about apple pie for Pi Day, but it's about apple cake instead. *hands*

Steve's ma wasn't much of a baker--she was usually too tired from her shifts at the hospital and the sewing she took in to make ends meet to spend extra time in the kitchen--but she had two specialties: hot cross buns on Good Friday, and apple cake for Steve's birthday. It was even better than Horn and Hardart's applesauce cake, he'd told her once, and she'd laughed and ruffled his hair.

Bucky's mother had made the cake for Steve's birthday the year after his ma passed, but it wasn't the same. Even though he'd eaten it with a show of enthusiasm, every bite reminded him of what he'd lost. The cake never appeared again, though Steve still had his mother's handwritten recipe tucked into the back of one of his sketchbooks. 

When he was on tour with the USO, he'd received a care package for his birthday from the Barnes family, containing cinnamon sugar cookies and concerned letters about his health that he couldn't answer, because everything he wrote was either a lie or redacted.

Bucky fared a little better after Steve rescued him, his care packages arriving at SSR headquarters in London with stunning regularity (possibly because his father was a postman), and there was always a note and a small batch of cookies for Steve, which of course he shared with the other Commandos.

When he woke in the future, everything tasted wrong--too sweet, too salty, everything subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) off. Steve shrugged it off as best he could--maybe this was the way things had always tasted, but he hadn't known it before the serum, and then after, he'd mostly eaten Army food, which barely deserved the name. 

So he made an effort. Food was better when he realized that not everything had to be boiled the way his mother had done it, and that there was more to the spice rack than salt and pepper. He was here now, and he'd always tried to make the best of whatever life put in front of him. 

And then it put Bucky in front of him. A violent, lost, amnesiac version of Bucky, but still Bucky--changed, yes, but everyone who'd ever gone to war had come home changed in some way. Bucky'd just taken longer, and suffered more, than the rest of them.

Once he had Bucky back, it seemed safest to move into the apartment in Stark Tower that Tony had set up for him. Bucky's recovery was slow--a work in progress, Sam called it--and not anything like steady, but Steve had fought harder and longer for less important things. He wasn't going to give up on Bucky now, and Bucky's rare smiles and gradually returning memories made him believe Bucky wasn't giving up either.

It was Banner who told him about the Greenmarket down on Union Square, about the fresh bread and locally grown produce he could get there, about the old-fashioned butcher on Bleecker Street where he could buy steaks and chops and sausage. It was an old-fashioned way to shop--Tony called him a hipster, and he'd learned not to rise to the bait--but a lot less intimidating than the cereal aisle in Food Emporium. He experimented more with his cooking, now that he was comfortable with the process, and the food he made was some of the best he'd ever had. It gave him another thing to love about this future he'd found himself living in, especially once Bucky was able to eat solid food again, and keep it down nine meals out of ten.

And it was Pepper who helped him get his old sketchbooks back from the Smithsonian, specifically the one with his mother's special recipes tucked into the empty pages at the back. He unpacked them carefully in his room, the dusty smell of old paper making his throat tight. But it wasn't until he got to the recipes, the paper soft from being folded and stained for so long, the directions in his mother's handwriting, that he started to cry. It wasn't that he hadn't cried before--he'd cried when Bucky fell, he'd cried after his first visit to Peggy at the nursing home, at the tombs of the other Howlies, and more than once on the road looking for Bucky--but this was an older loss, and one he hadn't thought still stung.

He didn't know how long he'd been crying when he heard the shuffle of feet in his doorway. Bucky was working on making noise when he moved, so as not to startle people when he didn't need them to be startled. He wasn't much for talking or touching now, but he stood awkwardly at the threshold, hands clenching at his sides like he wanted to do something with them, and said, "Steve?"

Steve swallowed hard and looked up, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands, as if he could hide that he'd been crying. "Hey, Bucky."

"You okay?"

Steve gave him a small smile that probably looked as watery as it felt. "Yeah."

"Doesn't sound like it."

Steve patted the sketchbook resting on the bed next to him. "Found my ma's old apple cake recipe."

"Oh."

Steve's smile felt a little firmer now. "Yeah." He looked down at the sketchbook and then up at Bucky again. "I think we have some apples. You wanna try and make it?"

Bucky only hesitated briefly before he said, "Okay," and that as much as anything made Steve feel like they were making progress.

"Okay," he said, wiping his eyes again and blowing his nose. "Let's get started."

After a few false starts--the sound of the mixer startled Bucky and it took a few minutes to talk him down, and then when they were almost done with the batter, Steve had to run to Bruce's floor for walnuts--the cake turned out fine. It was moist and full of apples, and even if it didn't taste exactly the way Steve remembered, it still reminded him of his ma, and he was eating it with Bucky. Now it was something they could remember together.


End file.
